Ingredients
1 kg of pork belly cut into cubes
1/2 cup chinese rice or gourmet wine
3 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce
5 slices of ginger
3 star anise
1 tablespoon sugar or brown sugar
Method
1 . Parboil the cubes pork pieces for about 3 minutes and discard the water. You are not cooking it yet, you are simply cleaning the pork in hot water.
2 . Place all ingredients into a pot, including the pork. Then add water till it is barely covering the pork. Simmer on low heat with the lid on for about 1 hour.
3 . Remove the lid and let the liquid evaporate for about 20 to 30 minutes. If there is still alot of liquid left, pour away the excess till you are left with just a little and put back onto the fire to caramelize. You should end up with a thick, gorgeous sauce coating the pork.
What’s on my mind…
I’m not sure if this recipe will work with red meat but I plan to try it with lamb one day and I will update if it works out. I simply love slow cooking meat because the flavours become so rich and in this case, the fat of the meat will simply melt in your mouth.
For the pork belly, I would recommend purchasing from a reliable butcher from your wet market. When I purchased mine from the supermarket, the pork had lots of hair on it and I spent quite some time getting rid of the hair. Whereas, when I purchased from the butcher, the meat was completely clean and he even offered to cut it up into cubes for me, saving me lots of time. Do look at the cross section of the meat and make sure the fat layer is less than 25% of the thickness of the meat. If there is too much fat or skin, it becomes very tiring to enjoy this dish. You get sick of it very quickly if it is too fatty.
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